During my therapy session on Friday, I told my therapist I needed us to figure out “what the hell is wrong with me.” I had a lengthy list of symptoms and emotions I have felt over the past two weeks, along with potential “causes.” Of course, my therapist quickly responded with facts: this week was the two year anniversary of mine and Emily’s engagement, and the two year anniversary of her death is quickly approaching.

The Body Keeps The Score

I struggled with sleep disturbances for months after Emily died. Sometimes it would take hours for me to fall asleep. Even after I did, I would wake up sometime between 2:00 and 4:00 am — the hours when Emily’s condition quickly declined to the point of her never coming back. Worst of all, I would wake up nearly every morning with so much anxiety that I would vomit.

These issues eventually resolved themselves after about six months, with occasional days or weeks of temporary returns. But, the past two weeks have been especially rough.

When my therapist asked me to elaborate on my sleep issues during our session, I told her about my struggles to fall asleep. Then, I said, “I also keep waking up nearly every night between the hours of 2:00 and 4:00 am. No matter how tired I am, it takes at least an hour for me to fall back asleep. I find the timing odd, since that’s exactly when everything went downhill the night Emily died, but that sounds crazy for that to be connected to now.”

My therapist not only said it didn’t sound crazy at all, but it actually made perfect sense. I jokingly said, “The body keeps the score… Down to the second!” She laughed, then said, “That’s not as much of a joke as you’d think.”

I have done enough trauma processing to understand the interesting ways our brains store memories and associate sensory markers with traumatic moments. However, I don’t think I considered the possibility that our bodies could also store data based on our internal clocks. It seems plausible though, especially if you stop to consider the fact that this event happened almost two years ago.

As my therapist said, we usually assume the memories will trigger our emotions and bodily sensations. But, it seems the opposite can be true as well: our body can trigger emotions that make us remember events.

The Stuff of Nightmares

I don’t love the fact that I’m waking up in the middle of the night. But also, it isn’t just the problems with falling asleep or staying asleep, though: it’s what my brain keeps doing as I’m actually asleep.

I refused to leave Emily’s side for the entirety of the time we spent in the hospital. When they transferred her from St. Thomas to Vanderbilt, I basically told the paramedics I was riding in the ambulance whether they liked it or not. Once at Vanderbilt, the only reason I left the room at all was because Emily told me I had to eat, and even then I ran to the cafeteria and came right back.

For better or worse, my decision to stay with her the entire time meant I also witnessed all three of her “crashes.”

The first time, I was asleep and simply woke to everything beeping and a team rushing into the room, asking me what had happened. I watched every blood draw, every bedside scan and check, and asked so many questions.

The second time, I watched her experience what looked like a seizure, mid-sentence as we talked about wedding plans because neither of us could sleep after the first event. I yelled, helped the first nurse to arrive get her into a “seizure position,” and continued watching nurses and doctors get her to “revive” and continue to work on her.

And, while those two or so hours were stressful and difficult, they were nothing compared to the last one… And that’s what I keep reliving when I close my eyes.

Love is Watching Someone Die

As I told my therapist about my recent nightmares on Friday, I said, “I watched my partner die right in front of me. I watched the monitor flatline. I stood helplessly in the corner as nurses began performing CPR. I may have been the last voice she heard. I don’t think that’s a memory I can ever erase. It’s a nightmare that will live in my mind for the rest of my life.”

The whole situation reminds of Death Cab for Cutie’s song “What Sarah Said.”

While I don’t love having the memory of watching Emily die forever etched in my brain, I don’t think I could have lived with myself if I hadn’t been there at the end. I love Emily with every cell in my body. And, if the song is right and love equates to being there when they cross over, then I feel blessed that I could be that person in Emily’s life.

Learning to Live With The Nightmares

As this second anniversary approaches, I feel like I’ve come full circle with trauma in an ironic way. When Emily and I first started dating, I was still finishing up trauma processing from past events (primarily sexual assault). In fact, Emily and I had an entire discussion around the fact that I may need us to pause physical intimacy as I worked through my most difficult “exposures,” which she was fully onboard with.

And now, without intending to, Emily has become the trauma I need to process.

I’ve accepted her death is not my fault. I’ve also discovered that I can have romantic feelings for other people without it diminishing the love I still feel for her. But what I haven’t done is worked through everything wrapped into those final 48 hours.

I have only walked into St. Thomas Rutherford twice since Emily died, and both times had nothing to do with the ER. When I did need to go to the ER for my concussion back in early September, I intentionally went to the new ER even though it was further from my house. What’s more, I haven’t set food on VUMC’s campus at all since the morning I left, clutching Emily’s shoes, glasses, and other items.

There are so many things in our house I still haven’t moved or even touched. I cry every time I see a Kia like the one she had. I panic when anyone I know mentions abdominal pain… The list goes on and on.

But, I know that I’m going to need to eventually face these things if I want to find peace. I need to process the trauma of her death. Not so I can erase it, but so I can decrease the emotional intensity I experience with anything tangentially related to her death.

Maybe that’s what Year 3 has in store? Only God knows… And maybe Emily does, too.